


The Land of the Gods

by Ruusverd



Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [23]
Category: Echoes of the Fall - Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26123425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruusverd/pseuds/Ruusverd
Summary: Geralt's strategy proves effective, but at a heavy price.Emhyr tries to seize his Champion of Champions, but gets more than he bargained for.Ciri reaches the Godsland, but finds out something she didn't want to know.Cahir doesn't know what on earth is going on, but it's really scary.
Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863010
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14





	The Land of the Gods

**Author's Note:**

> This section and the next have a lot of shifting POVs and overlapping perspectives of the same events, so hopefully it isn't confusing or too repetitive. 
> 
> Because I am nicer than Adrian Tchaikovsky, Geralt's Champion is Epicyon haydeni, largest of the Borophaginae subfamily of extinct "bone-crushing dogs." Since they are only fossils now no one can prove they *didn't* have white fur, so there. I'm sure it's not the worst crime ever committed against paleontology.

_In the land of the gods_ _there_ _lived an ancient creature_ _twice as large as his cousin_ _the_ _W_ _olf, with_ _a wide,_ _blunt_ _head designed for crushing bone._ _The Bone-Crusher had left the world of the living long before those with human shapes had come,_ _and he had little interest in their tiny, fleeting lives_ _._ _He had no people, no tribe, not even mute beasts to wear his shape._

 _Time was virtually meaningless to him in the_ _G_ _odsland, until_ _a group of his cousin's priests came_ _to bind him to a boy of their own people,_ _desiring a Champion for the Wolf_ _. The Bone-Crusher laughed at their arrogance and would have walked away,_ _but before he did_ _his_ _gaze_ _met the_ _terrified_ _eyes of the wolf-boy_ _the priests had_ _dragged before him_ _._

 _He_ _saw_ _that the_ _wolf-_ _boy_ _carried not only_ _a_ _soul of_ _his_ _cousin the_ _W_ _olf, but_ _also of_ _the Serpent, pushed far down where the boy himself likely_ _wasn’t aware of it_ _._ _He_ _guessed the boy had tried to cut th_ _at soul_ _away_ _and thought he’d succeeded_ _, b_ _ut the children of the Serpent could not be made and_ _unmade_ _in the way of other people._

 _The Bone-Crusher_ _thought back to_ _the_ _time of the_ _Great Sunderin_ _g_ _,_ _when the_ _Terror_ _of the Plague People_ _had threatened to de_ _stroy_ _Everything That Is,_ _even the realm of the gods_ _._ _He looked up, where the Lost Ones shone like burning lights in the sky, forever looking for the way in and never finding it. In those days, t_ _he_ _Serpent_ _had_ _carried the_ _G_ _odsland to safety on his back before the barrier had been sealed_ _,_ _but_ _he had_ _remained_ _beneath the earth_ _ever since_ _, cut off from the_ _G_ _odsland he had saved_ _._

You saved us from the Terror, _he thought towards_ _the distant_ _Serpent_ _he could still feel_ _moving_ _under_ _the ground_ _,_ I will lend your child one of my souls this once so he may avenge himself on my cousin's priests.

 _But the ancient creature had miscalculated. He had never_ _had dealings_ _with humans before, and he underestimated_ _both_ _the cleverness of their_ _mind_ _s and the fragility of their lives. The moment his soul touched the wolf-boy it became ensnared,_ _bound by the priests’ trap_ _in a_ _net that_ _he couldn't escape._

 _In his rag_ _e_ _at being tricked,_ _he burst into the world of the living._ _He_ _killed th_ _e_ _priests who had dared to_ _bind him_ _,_ _cutting them down in their huma_ _n_ _shapes_ _so that their souls would not return to pol_ _lute_ _his cousin the Wolf._ _Only when they were all dead did he realize his very presence was damaging the wolf-boy._

 _The priests had been clever enough to trap him, but their_ _trap_ _continued_ _to constrict_ _in a way they_ _surely_ _hadn’t intended. The bindings wound themselves tighter and tighter, crushing the weaker souls beneath his weight_ _rather than_ _allowing them to seamlessly trade places_ _in the natural way_ _._ _The boy cried out within him as the edges of_ _his_ _souls began to overlap, forced to either merge or_ _be pulverized to dust_ _as they were pressed into an ever-shrinking space._

 _He_ _felt regret, for the boy was surely as much a victim as the Bone-Crusher himself_ _._ _He drew as much of himself away as he could, until_ _what_ _remained was small enough to lie quiet_ _ly_ _in the back of the wolf-boy’s mind without_ _causing_ _the_ _flawed trap_ _to c_ _lose further_ _and_ _do_ _more harm._

 _And then,_ _satisfied he had done all he could,_ _the Bone-Crusher turned his attention back to the_ _G_ _odsland, content to leave th_ _e trapped_ _portion of himself lying dormant in the_ _unnatural_ _ties_ _connecting him to the boy. Human lives were brief after all,_ _and_ _he would be free_ _d_ _soon enough._ _Many years went by, unmeasured and unnoticed by the ancient creature._

 _Now, h_ _e_ _was surprised_ _to_ _find himself_ _drawn into the_ _living_ _world again, this time by the wolf-boy,_ _now a man,_ _deliberately Stepping to his form. He_ _opened his eyes_ _and saw_ _dozens of_ _the W_ _olf's people_ _locked in battle with the_ _children of Old Crocodile_ _._ _He felt a swell of_ _anger_ _roll through him_ _at the sight of the reptiles_ _. These had been_ his _lands,_ _his and the other creatures of the north_ _,_ _the Patient Ones did not belong here!_

 _He felt the wolf-_ _man_ _scream_ _ing_ _as his_ _mind and souls were_ _crushed_ _by the weight of the Champion._ _The twisted_ _net_ _the priests had placed on them so many years ago continued to tighten the longer he remained in this form, once again threatening to shatter the weaker souls_ _tangled up_ _in it_ _with him,_ _or merge them into one shapeless mass that couldn’t be separated_ _._

 _From_ _what he could see_ _in the_ _wolf-man’s_ _mind_ _,_ _the Bone-Crusher knew that_ _the_ _Patient Ones_ _were threatening the man’s pack,_ _his mate and his_ _pup_ _._ _T_ _he man had Stepped to_ _t_ _his shape to_ _defend_ _them,_ _in spite of the deadly trap they were both caught in_ _._ Protecting one’s pack is a good thing, _he decided,_ a worthy enough cause to use my shape for.

 _W_ _ith_ _a_ _howl_ _that no living ear had heard,_ _the Bone-Crusher threw himself into battle against_ _the children of Old Crocodile_ _. He could not avoid the damage his presence did to the strange wolf-man, but he could ensure that_ _the_ _man’_ _s sacrifice_ _would_ _not be in vain_ _._

* * *

In the Godsland stood a young girl, looking around and feeling slightly lost. Yennefer had described what she would see, but the descriptions hadn’t prepared her for the reality. After all, Yennefer had never seen this place herself. The Serpent couldn’t reach the part of the Godsland where the other gods lived, so Ciri would have to go alone with only Yennefer’s voice to guide her from the real world.

Beside her stood her lioness, and behind her lurked the form she didn’t want to see. The world was dark, caught in perpetual night while angry stars darted around the sky in frantic movements overhead. In every direction she saw an endless expanse of hills, and on each hill stood a god. Every kind of creature that had ever lived, and some that surely had never existed in the living world, each standing on its own hilltop, arrayed in order of decreasing kinship.

Ciri turned her attention to hills closest to her and saw that many were vacant, their occupants having climbed down to meet her. She felt their hostile eyes on her as she knelt in their sacred space, studying her and seeing nothing that belonged to them.

The Tiger eyed her Lion with the vague recognition of distant kin, but the Tiger knew no family beyond mother and child, and so the connection meant little. All the gods of the north watched this stranger who had dared to invade their sacred place, waiting for an explanation of her presence. She didn’t see the Wolf, but from over the hills beyond her sight she could hear him howling.

She described what she was seeing to Yennefer.

“The Wolf’s attention is being called elsewhere,” Yennefer told her, sounding somewhat distracted herself. Ciri wondered what was happening in the real world, but didn’t dare let her focus wander. “Follow his voice, you’ll have to go find him.”

She ran in the direction of the howling, the other northern gods following behind her like a menacing retinue. She hadn’t made it very far when suddenly Yennefer screamed like she was being torn apart. Overlapping with Yennefer’s scream, she heard another voice howling. Not the familiar howls of a wolf, but a larger, ancient voice that had no place in the world of the living.

“Yennefer!” Ciri spun around, looking for a way to escape the Godsland and help her, and seeing only the endless hills with their solemn occupants. “Mama! What’s happening?”

“Keep… going,” Yennefer’s voice was wavering. “Keep running… and don’t stop. This... is our only chance… and we don’t have… much time.”

Ciri sprinted across the hills as fast as she could. In the real world, she could hear Lem’s mad cackle, Cahir’s shouting, and Yennefer’s pained gasping. She could hear Milva’s hawk screeching and feel the echoes of Regis’ soundless scream. She wondered with sudden dread why she couldn’t hear Geralt, only those unearthly howls.

* * *

 _I just punched_ _the Kasra,_ Cahir thought a bit hysterically, wrestling with the man he’d once served. _I_ _throttled_ _the Kasra, the most powerful man in the world,_ _back into human shape and punched him in the face_ _._ _My father’_ _s soul_ _is staring down from the Caiman and disowning me from_ _beyond_ _the grave._

The Kasra’s war-mask had been knocked off, and without it he looked like an utterly normal river man in a pretentious robe that only got in his way. He wasn't even a particularly skilled fighter, Cahir thought with strange disappointment. Even Stepped to the River’s Champion, his blows had been clumsy and unpracticed. _He has armies to do his fighting,_ Cahir realized, _He likely hasn’t_ _been in a real fight_ _in years,_ _not since he took the throne back from the Usurper_ _._ _Perhaps not even then._ _A_ _ll he's good for is ruling._

Cahir spared a glance towards Lem, who was laughing at the Snake priest and jabbing at him with her long spear, keeping him out of the stone circle where Yennefer and Ciri knelt and herself out of reach of his venom. He hoped she skewered him, sacrilegious as the thought was.

Cahir's concentration was broken by the sound of Yennefer screaming. Drowning out the scream came a deafening howl that cut through the noise of the battle and came from the throat of no creature known to man.

Everyone on the island froze for a moment, staring at the creature that now blocked the causeway. The general shape of the body resembled a wolf, but it was far larger and its head looked strangely distorted, too wide and blunt, as if a hyena’s jaws had been crammed into the skull of a lion, and then the whole creature stretched to the size of a bear. It had a heavy white pelt, and as its broad head swung towards them Cahir saw that it had golden, slit-pupiled eyes. With a shock he realized that the creature was Geralt.

“That's not possible,” the Kasra breathed, as the creature turned and tore into the soldiers crowding the causeway, massive iron teeth crushing through their armor like it was made of wet leaves and tossing them into the bog with little apparent effort. “The Wolf _has_ no Champions.”

“It looks like he does now,” Cahir said blankly, watching the Champion with mingled awe and unease. He was sure Geralt would have mentioned before now if he was a Champion, and something about this one didn’t look right. Geralt preferred to fight Stepped, but he moved between his shapes fluidly and frequently Stepped back when he saw an opening better suited for human hands and his long knife. This creature never Stepped at all, to the human or the wolf, and it didn’t move as if a human mind were directing it.

The Kasra shook off Cahir’s hold while he was distracted and ran for the circle. Cahir managed to grab his robe, but the Kasra shrugged out of the outer layer and darted between the stones before Cahir could catch him again. He dropped to his knees opposite Ciri and fell into a meditative pose, obviously trying to interfere with the ritual. Yennefer had Stepped, and her serpent was writhing on the ground, twisting in ways that looked painful, clearly unable to do anything to stop him.

Cahir paused on the edge of the circle. He wanted to enter and drag the Kasra away, but he could feel the hostility of the northern gods against his foreign soul, and he feared to provoke them further by entering their circle. He looked around, hoping to see someone more appropriate who could help.

Most of the Crocodiles Geralt had knocked from the causeway were either dead or floundering helplessly in the bog, Stepping back and forth trying to find a shape that could move through the sucking mud, but a few had managed to thrash their way to the edge and were crawling out behind Geralt’s back.

He started to run towards them when Lem shrieked. He whipped around and saw her leap away from the Snake priest, who had grown to a massive size and had almost managed to reach her with his deadly fangs. He froze, not sure which way to turn or who he should help, and then in the blink of an eye everything changed.

* * *

Ciri skidded to a stop as she suddenly encountered a man, the first human she had seen in this place. She recognized his robe as the one the masked Kasra had been wearing when Geralt had gone to speak with him, though he’d lost his fancy coat and wasn’t wearing the mask. He was looking at her with a strange expression she didn’t like.

"Get out of my way,” she demanded, hearing the Wolf’s howling just beyond the next hill.

The man looked over her shoulder and saw the gods of the north arrayed behind her. He beamed with pride. "You have tamed all these already?"

"No, they're deciding if they want to eat me," Ciri told him, fairly certain it was true. "I need to find the Wolf and you're in my way."

The man made a dismissive gesture. "The Wolf is only one, it can wait. You must master these first."

Ciri didn't know what the man was talking about, but she could feel the already hostile aura of the northern gods plummet even further at his words. She wondered why Yennefer wasn’t saying anything. She wondered if any of her family was still alive, if the Kasra was here.

"Get out of my way!" she demanded again, trying to go around him.

The man began to look annoyed. He grabbed her arm and spun her around to face the northern gods. "These are yours to take! It is your birthright to hold all the souls of all the people!"

“I don’t _want_ their souls!” She kicked him in the shin and twisted away from him, peripherally aware that the focus of the gods’s ire had shifted from her to the Kasra. Then she froze. He’d spun her around so quickly she’d come face to face with the soul she hadn’t wanted to see: the young crocodile that had been patiently following her ever since her souls had come. She’d thought that second soul had begun to fade away, but it had only been waiting quietly for her to turn around. Her lioness snarled, and she felt like she was being pulled in two directions at once as both her souls stood ready to fight each other.

She stumbled back, for the first time seeing that the Kasra was followed by a large crocodile and a strange lizard that walked on two legs and held its clawed hands in front of it. _How did I miss that?_ she wondered. She looked between his crocodile and her own, sudden suspicions growing in her mind.

“You are my daughter,” the Kasra said firmly, confirming what she hadn’t wanted to know. “You are the daughter of Old Crocodile, and the daughter of the Plains, raised in the Crown of the World. You will be the master of all the shapes that exist, and through you all the world will be united before the Daybreak Throne.”

Ciri continued to stare. The air around her was turning cold, and a strong wind began to blow. She felt more than heard the Wolf coming to stand behind her, and knew that the storm was his wrath, so fierce that it bent the world around them. The Wolf did nothing to help or hinder her, but his presence at her back gave Ciri the courage to glare at the Kasra and the shapes that followed him. “I am not your daughter!” she announced defiantly, “I will _never_ be your daughter! I am the daughter of the Wolf, and you don’t belong here!”

She felt something tear loose inside herself, and the crocodile that had followed her for so long simply turned and walked away into the darkness without a backwards glance, as if it had never been. Her lioness looked at her calmly, and she felt an unexpectedly sharp sadness at knowing she would never Step to that shape again. “I am the daughter of the Wolf,” she repeated softly, and gritted her teeth against the tearing pain as the cat turned and left as well.

The Kasra’s face contorted with rage, “What have you done? You were meant to _master_ the gods! We would have carried the northern gods to the south, and brought the strength of the Sun River Nation to the north! There would have been no more tribes, no more division, only one people and the Daybreak Throne ruling them all!”

Ciri inhaled deeply. She had expected to feel empty with both her souls gone, but instead she felt too full. She took a step forward, somehow knowing that for the next few moments she held all the gods of the north, just as the Kasra had wanted. It wouldn’t last for more than a handful of seconds, so many different minds could never coexist for long in one individual, but in this moment all the gods were of one mind and spoke with one voice.

“ _You will not take us to the_ _South. This is_ _our place_ _, and_ _the River is yours_ _,”_ she declared, not to the man, but to the gods that he had carried with him to the north, _“Go back to the River where you belong!”_

The two shapes that followed the Kasra turned and fled, and the man fell to his knees. He clutched his chest and screamed in horror.

“ _Go back to the River,”_ Ciri repeated, already feeling the crowd of souls beginning to slip away, _“_ _And your souls will return to you_ _. Do not leave_ _your stone city_ _again,_ _or_ _you_ _will_ _lose them forever.”_

* * *

Cahir staggered as an invisible wave rippled out from the stone circle over the battlefield. Every one of the Crocodiles who had been Stepped was suddenly thrown back to their human form. Cahir felt his own Caiman recoil in mortal terror and hide itself deep inside him, and knew that if he tried to Step his soul wouldn't respond. Even the Wolves paused in their onslaught, aware that something terrible had happened.

In the circle, the Kasra screamed in denial and staggered to his feet. Ciri remained kneeling, unmoving except for her mouth, speaking words Cahir couldn’t hear. The Kasra stumbled out of the circle, horror and devastation etched into every line of his face.

Cahir stared at him, suddenly more terrified of this unsteady man in disheveled robes than he had been when the man had worn the shape of the River’s Champion. The Kasra met his eyes, and Cahir saw a horrible, yawning emptiness burning behind those eyes, as if their owner could devour the whole world and still not satisfy the hunger inside him.

 _Hollow._ Cahir realized, frozen with fear. _He’s hollow._ _His souls are gone._ He reached inside himself desperately and was reassured to find his Caiman still there, though buried deep and too panicked to respond to him.

“The river!” The empty thing shouted, turning towards his priest, who Stepped back and stared with mingled fear and disgust. “Help me! Get me to the river!”

Vilgefortz's face settled into grim resignation, and he slowly walked towards the soulless shell that had once been Emhyr Kasra. “I will give you what help I can,” he said. He laid a comforting hand on the former Champion’s shoulder, then drew a knife with his other hand and thrust forward sharply.

The Kasra must have seen his intent, because he twisted aside at the last moment and the knife entered his side instead of his heart. The two Crocodiles that had pulled themselves out of the bog behind Geralt’s Champion shouted in outrage as the Kasra fell to the ground. They were too far away to have seen the emptiness of the man’s eyes and to understand the reason their Stepped forms had abandoned them. They only saw the living embodiment of Old Crocodile betrayed by the Serpent.

They sprinted past Cahir with their weapons raised, and cut down the Snake priest before the man could react to the unexpected threat. Even with the Kasra’s blood covering his hands, it never occurred to Vilgefortz that a Crocodile would raise a hand against a Serpent until their knives found his flesh. Lem scurried around them and ran to Cahir, her spear no longer needed to keep the Snake at bay.

“Emhyr Kasra is fallen! The Kasra is wounded!” The Crocodiles shouted to their fellows when the priest was dead and they knelt next to their unconscious ruler to press their hands to the bleeding wound. The cry rippled through the soldiers on the causeway and back to those waiting on the shore. The stunned Crocodiles instantly threw down their weapons and surrendered, and the Wolves raised a deafening howl of triumph.

The eyes of the two soldiers Cahir could see were blank with shock and confusion, but not empty and hungry as the Kasra’s had been. _Their souls are hiding like mine,_ Cahir thought in relief, _but they aren’t hollow. Emhyr Kasra was the only one._ He was glad, both for their sakes and because he didn’t want to imagine fighting a small army of such creatures.

Some of the Wolves looked perfectly willing to simply slaughter the invaders where they stood, but the chiefs were moving among their hunters, snarling at them and cuffing them into obedience. Chastened, some of the Wolves began to gather up the dropped weapons, while others began to fasten halters around the river men’s necks to keep them from Stepping, useless though the precaution might be at the moment. Cahir imagined the soldiers would be marched back towards the south even faster than the Kasra had marched them north.

Lem let out a shaky sounding cackle of relief, and Cahir turned at grin at her triumphantly. He was about to go pull her into a hug when her eyes flicked over his shoulder and the smile suddenly dropped from her face, her expression morphing into alarm. Cahir spun around, knowing how dire a situation had to be to stop Lem from grinning.

Geralt’s Champion was staggering up the causeway towards the island, head drooping and swinging back and forth jerkily as if he was having trouble controlling his movements. His golden eyes were fixed on the stone circle and Ciri, but he stumbled to a stop before he had crossed half the distance, shrinking back down to a man on his hands and knees. Cahir and Lem shouted for help and ran towards Geralt as he fell to the ground and started convulsing.

**Author's Note:**

> This one got long enough that I almost split it into two chapters, after "In the blink of an eye everything changed," but I decided that the first half didn't cover enough ground to stand on its own and three cliffhangers in a row would be too much, lol.


End file.
